NHS updating guidance on single-sex hospital accommodation after EHRC release

[Whatchamacallitt]

The NHS has announced it is updating it's guidance in light of the EHRC guidance being released. The new guidance will be called Privacy, dignity and safety in hospital accommodation. Here's hoping this is the beginning of the end of male patients in female hospital wards and male staff in female changing rooms and toilets.

That NHS update is a massive fluffy word salad. The regret and sadness is very quietly implicit.

I am in NZ. My aunt has severe, advanced dementia. She cannot remember what happened 10 minutes ago. She is currently in a mixed-sex hospital ward. There is a man in the bed across from her.

I voted "unsure" but it's probably more a "no". They will find the loopholes.

I last worked for the NHS 10 years ago and management was very, very careful to maintain single sex wards. There were periods where the female ward was full and the male only 40%, but no female bed meant no female beds. I'm not sure what that hospital is like now, but it is in a Trust with mental health hospitals, so depends if the old matron is still there. I can't see her allowing mixed wards.

There is no suggestion that Trusts might abandon trying to defend ongoing or upcoming tribunal discrimination cases.

I've read more NHS policies than I care to count including a couple that have been updated since the SCJ. I am sure they will continue to obfuscate and use weasel words to deny women truly single sex spaces.

I was one of the few optimists. It’s the law for pity’s sake. Surely surely they have to do it now?

Hmm, I shall reserve judgement until I read it. Up to now, the NHS has prided itself on being spectacularly outside the law.

We’ve not seen any Trusts concede at Tribunal with staff even though it’s obvious that they GC win rate is 2-3 times higher than for other cases.

We’ve had news articles about patients being harmed and staff cover ups/obstruction of the police.

But… Just the other week NHSE lost spectacularly on the FayeCR case. The GLP made binding case law in the High Court against their own side.

The long awaited EHRC guidance is now out and everyone’s claiming they still need to wait another 40 days to get lawful…

The one updated Trust policy I’ve seen is based on single sex wards for males and TIM inclusive for Womens single sex spaces… it’s language is so mangled that even though it’s obviously wrong non lawyers are worried about calling it out

Do i think NHSE will protect women’s rights? Maybe but probably not -
I think there will be some progress and some absolutely ridiculous highjinks to avoid being completely lawful. Then we need to get them sued

NHSE is being shut down, with massive redundancies. I can’t imagine this will be anywhere near the top of their HR department’s to do list, even assuming they still have enough qualified people left to run an HR department.

The original guidance was from the Department of Health, by the Chief Nursing Officer. I think that’s the route that a Secretary of State for Health would use, if they wanted to provide legal clarity and give themselves a bit of political cover. That way the guidance would have professional (nursing) backing rather than a more political Secretary of State letter.

I’m hoping that’s the plan - just leaving it will be horribly expensive and unpleasant for the individuals who have to fight legally Trust by Trust, and will waste a lot of NHS time and money.

It will make it easier for people to sue. They will not want to continue with tribunals but if they do they will lose, so really however sadfaced they do it, they have to uphold the rights of women and girls.

I still believe, given how beholden the NHS are to activists, they would prefer to lose in court so they can say "wasn't us, they made us do it." However, I can't see the Powers That Be or insurers are going to be happy to keep throwing money down the toilet indefinitely. And the optics are terrible.

That's awful, I'm sorry to your poor aunt, and to the other patients (including men) who are being denied same sex privacy.

I truly hope they don't find loopholes. I think there is a need for workable solutions in a small minority of cases, such as trans-identified women who look convincingly like men. I can see why using a side room would be appropriate in that situation, even if they are a scarce resource. But there can be no excuse for putting trans-identified men on women's wards under any circumstance.

Today's NHS Survey

What is your gender?
Male/Female/Other/Prefer not to say

How were you described at birth?
Male/Female/Etc

Complained in the comments box that they were not recording sex correctly in the survey

Is "described" the new "assigned?" The same way it looks as though "trans+" is going to be the new "LGBTQIA+"?

"Described at birth" might be a lot harder to counteract than "assigned at birth."

We need to watch for these devious little shifts, keep our wits about us as they start to morph.

Anyway, glad you complained.

'Described ' is an improvement on 'assigned', which implies that an element of discretion rests with the person doing the assigning. A description can be accurate or inaccurate, but it doesn't alter the nature of whatever is being described. Sex is innate, not assigned.

And how about the safety, dignity and all the rest of the patients, for whom the NHS exists? This document seems to talk only about the staff.

What was being described though? Not gender identity because that's a mind thing, although it depends on which transperson or ally you ask and the answer may vary on any given day. Perhaps all birth certificates should be written in pencil or erasable ink.

I would cross out male/female and say “as the cutest baby ever born”. Which is true. 🤣🤣

There was a report about a woman / trans man being raped within hours of being admitted to a men’s mental health ward in UK.

Yes I heard about that, terrible. She was mentally ill and vulnerable. She should have been protected regardless of her wishes.

But wasn’t because of nonsense policies and placating what is now an extremist lobby group.

She was raped within an hour of arriving on the ward although bullying from the men on the ward started immediately. They noticed she was female straight away. The NHS staff obstructed the police investigation so successfully that an innocent man was arrested, for assisting the rapist, and tried before they realised they had the wrong person.

There is at least one thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5531970-5531970-another-nhs-trust-perverts-the-course-of-justice-in-relation-to-a-rape-case?flipped=1&page=1

Look what I found - from 1995 when single sex was first coming into the NHS...

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199495/ldhansrd/vo950118/text/50118-07.htm

I should take the opportunity also to thank the great many members of the public who have written and telephoned me supporting the Bill. They come from all parts of the country. They have all given accounts of the great distress they, their relatives and friends have suffered as a result of mixed-sex wards. Every letter has been in favour of the Bill. I have them here. There are well over 200 of them.

I have been in this place (the House of Commons or the House of Lords) for 25 years, and that is the largest number of individual letters—they are all individually written—that I have ever received, even during the abortion debates of the 1970s. I imagine that the Department of Health has also received a great many letters. I cannot possibly reply to them individually, but I acknowledge their receipt, and say how pleased I am and how useful they are.

...

Many of the letters that I have received have come from qualified nurses with first-hand experience of the indignity, distress, stress, suffering, and, I fear, danger which arise from the mixed-ward system. As well as the RCN, the Patients' Association, especially Dr. Patricia Wilkie, has done extensive research on mixed-sex wards, which has shown conclusively that they are not satisfactory nursing units and that the majority of patients is opposed to such wards. The College of Health has also done work on this. Again, it is in favour of the Bill.

The National Federation of Women's Institutes has received many complaints, and has recorded its opposition to mixed-sex wards. I have had letters from individual women's institutes. Those organisations, working, as they have, so hard, have been fighting a hard and difficult battle, apparently without too much help until some elements of the national media decided to lend a hand. We should be grateful to them for that.

BBC "Woman's Hour", for example, has put on at least two serious programmes about mixed-sex wards, and the public's reaction was positively against them.

...

We should ask when and why mixed-sex wards were allowed to develop. After all, before the war, when health and hospitals were meagrely financed compared with today, mixed-sex wards would have been unthinkable. Imagine any matron of a hospital allowing mixed-sex wards. I am sure that no one here tonight can imagine that. Apparently, the wards were allowed to be introduced in the 1960s and 1970s in order to make the best use of new high technology equipment. I find that reasoning quite unacceptable. There is more to nursing and medical treatment than high-tech equipment. The state of mind of the patient must be considered and an anxious patient can have his or her recovery seriously retarded by that anxiety.

Furthermore, many people who have never shared a house let alone a bedroom with a person of the opposite sex suddenly find themselves sharing bedroom accommodation in mixed-sex wards and sharing toilet and lavatory facilities without locks on doors. People of the opposite sex wander around half naked, having embarrassing treatments if not in sight certainly within sound.

...

It is clear that NHS patients are not being treated with the respect and consideration to which they are entitled. I fear that they are too often treated as though they are the recipients of charitable services rather than as part owners of their National Health Service. We must always remember that. We must understand that the NHS belongs to the people and that when they are patients in hospital they are entitled to have their dignity and choices respected as well as first-class nursing and medical treatment. This cannot be done unless people are given the right to be treated in single-sex wards. That is fundamental to the maintenance of patients' dignity and choice.

...

As has been said, there is very strong support for this legislation. I did not realise how strongly people felt about this matter until I asked around.

Thanks Knotty - it is interesting that almost all of this is just as relevant to today as it was over 30 years ago. A much venerated public service that should have care for people at its heart seems to struggle with the basics.

Oh, the irony!

The National Federation of Women's Institutes has received many complaints, and has recorded its opposition to mixed-sex wards. I have had letters from individual women's institutes. Those organisations, working, as they have, so hard, have been fighting a hard and difficult battle, apparently without too much help until some elements of the national media decided to lend a hand. We should be grateful to them for that.
BBC "Woman's Hour", for example, has put on at least two serious programmes about mixed-sex wards, and the public's reaction was positively against them.

I had two fairly major operations in the 1980s (I know it was that decade because of the ages my children were at the time), and the hospital I was in had at that time four surgical wards. They were called "men's surgical one" and "men's surgical two", "women's surgical one" and "women's surgical two".

The men's wards and the women's wards were on different floors of the hospital, and there was never any suggestion that it was acceptable in any way for a man to be given a bed in either women's ward or a woman given a bed in either men's.